Gettin' Lucky (12 page)

“Good game, Cass.”

I stepped backward and directly into Jesse. Super awkward—perfect.

“You think?” I stammered. “I mean, I guess it must have been, for you.”

He actually laughed, a short, easy chuckle that, to me, demonstrated just exactly how over me he really was.
Ha-haha, isn’t it amusing how badly I beat your butt?
“Nah, you were good,” he insisted.

“But you were better.”

“I didn’t know you played poker.”

“I didn’t,” I said. “I learned.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Well,” I reminded him, “I’ve had some free time lately.”

He had the manners to look a drop embarrassed by this, his cheek flushing slightly. “Right,” he said. I held my breath for a moment, wondering if he would somehow say something that would somehow, suddenly, make sense of all of his skankiness. He looked like he might be considering that.

Instead, though, he nodded his head shortly, like he’d just remembered something. Maybe the fact that Alana was waiting for him out in the front hall. “Good game,” he said, and strode back out of the room.

“Yeah,” I agreed, to no one in particular.

It took about thirteen minutes for me to stop trembling after he’d gone.

Ten

I woke up the next morning with a deep sense that something was Not Right.

Which was weird, considering that it was February 22, or: 2/22, which to me was incredibly lucky. I love stuff like that—repeating numbers and unintended patterns and whatever. To me it always seems like proof that Fate is somewhere out there, and—with any luck—working for me. But this morning there was a suspicion gnawing at the back of my mind. I dug up my lucky earrings—a pair of sapphire studs that Dad had given me for my last birthday (he knows I also love birthstone jewelry)—in a vague effort to ward off the unsettled feeling in my stomach.

Unfortunately, the sapphires totally fell down on the job. Something was definitely up.

“Something is definitely up.”

Elliot rubbed his eyes and looked up at me, the glow of the computer screen illuminating his eyes and making him look slightly alien and a little bit creepy. “How do you mean?” he asked, sounding doubtful.

I’d chased him down in the library during a free period; I could tell he was torn between wanting to talk to me and wanting desperately to turn back to whatever extra-credit project he was currently geeking out on.

“I can feel it in my bones,” I said, borrowing a favorite expression from my grandmother. She was very big on feeling things in her bones. Her bones knew all sorts of stuff—when it was going to rain, when my father was calling with bad news, when a Social Security check was going to be coming in the mail…. Those were good, helpful bones.

I figured some of it had to be genetic.

My bones had been nagging at me all day. It didn’t help that when I got to my locker before first period, I found that my
lucky horseshoe sticker had somehow lost its stick. All that was left was some tacky glue residue mucking up the inside of my locker door.

Elliot looked unimpressed at this amazing feat of physiology. He squinted at me. “And your bones are saying … what, exactly?”

I took a deep breath. “I think Jesse cheated last night.”

There, that was it. Now it was out and in the open. I mean, I realized how it sounded, and I didn’t want to be pegged as some kind of sore loser, but really, there was no other explanation available.

Elliot sighed and turned away from the computer. I’d definitely gotten his attention. Unfortunately, he seemed sort of weary. “What makes you think he cheated?”

“Other than the fact that he won, like, almost every single hand?”

“You said yourself he was an experienced player.”

“So is Marcus,” I pointed out. “For that matter, so are you. I mean, it’d be one thing if he had just wiped the floor with me. But he wiped the floor with
all
of us. Even his friends.”

“True,” Elliot conceded reluctantly. “But Cass, do you have any idea how hard it is to actually cheat at poker? Basically, you’re either playing with a bogus deck or you can see everyone else’s hand. And he was using Kelly’s deck, so we know that’s not the issue.”

“Well …,” I hedged.

“You think he could see our hands?” Elliot asked, his voice rising skeptically. “Come on, we’re better than that. Give yourself a little bit of credit.”

“I don’t care,” I said stubbornly, aware on some level that I sounded like a bratty three-year-old. “He’s not good enough to beat every single one of us at every single hand. Even those guys on TV aren’t
that
good.”

“He didn’t win every single hand,” Elliot countered.

I took a deep breath, forcing myself to be calm. Or, at least, calm-
er.
“He lost twice, Elliot.
Twice.
All evening. It’s weird. I mean, I’ve known him for a while. He used to brag to me whenever he’d won at anything. I’d remember if he were so completely and totally super-fantastic at poker.”

“You did say he was good,” Elliot replied.

“
Good
is different from
completely
and
totally super-fantastic,”
I insisted. “This is in a different category.”

Elliot ran his fingers through his hair, making it stand up in a million different directions. He was so frazzled, it was cute. But that had nothing to do with anything. “I have something to say,” he began. “I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

“You’re going to say I’m being this way because it pissed me off to see Jesse and Alana together last night,” I guessed.

“Sort of,” Elliot said sheepishly. “Except I might have said ‘upset you.’”

“Yeah, fine, sure—you knew it bugged me to have to spend the evening with them. But my bones are telling me that there’s something up with Jesse’s game, and my bones don’t lie. Don’t you think it’s weird how, out of the blue, he was just
dying
to play with us? You guys have been playing cards for a while now and he’s never wanted in on your game before.”

“I figured it just had to do with you, Cass—that he wanted to play against you since he heard that you’d gotten good.” Elliot looked at me like he wasn’t sure how I was going to take this last comment.

I snorted. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s it. He just couldn’t wait to test my skills.”

“Cheating is hard to do,” Elliot said again, in case I had forgotten that piece of information in the last three seconds since we’d been talking. “Why would Jesse do something like that?”

“You mean, why would someone as classy and upstanding as Jesse screw over his ex-girlfriend, his current girlfriend, and a table full of close friends and semiacquaintances? Gosh, I don’t know. I mean, I would never expect that sort of behavior from the little Boy Scout who, you know,
cheated on his girlfriend of two years with her best friend.”

Elliot coughed loudly. “Ah, um …” He faltered.

I put my hand on his shoulder to stop him before he spontaneously selfdestructed. He was so mortified, I had to feel bad for him. “Dude, I’m just saying. I’m not buying that Jesse just spent all night getting ultra-lucky. A very wise person once told me that you’ve got to play poker as if there were no such thing as luck.” I flashed my most winning grin at Elliot, hoping that he would be persuaded. It was a grin that had landed me a two-dollar raise in my
allowance, HBO on Demand, and my name added to my father’s emergency credit card. For the moment, though, Elliot seemed to be fairly impervious to its strengths. I held my breath.

“You may have a point,” Elliot said finally. He took off his glasses, laid them on the table next to him, and looked at me. The green in his eyes glinted with intensity. “So what now?”

“Here’s the thing.” I smiled. “I have a plan.”

Elliot and I found Jesse in the gym, shooting hoops with Dennis and Jake. Those guys were like Siamese triplets. It was unclear to me whether this free period was self-appointed or not. Not that it mattered to me, anyway.

We walked into the room just as Jesse sank a three pointer. Shocker: The ball swished cleanly through the net. It was like the rim didn’t even exist.

“Nice,” I said admiringly, coming up behind him.

He turned, clearly surprised to see me. “Thanks,” he said, somewhat taken aback. “Uh, what’s up?”

“Good game the other night,” I said casually, like he hadn’t marched into my new friend’s house with my ex-best friend on his arm and proceeded to totally ream me. No, nothing like that.

“Yeah?” he said dubiously. “’Cause I was thinking maybe you weren’t too into it.”

“Hey, I mean, fair is fair,” I said, resisting an almost visceral urge to choke on the words. “I guess you’re just that good.”

I was treading into dangerous territory. There was a chance that Jesse would see through my blatant attempts to appeal to his supersize ego.

He grinned, flashing his baby blues at me. “It’s cool of you to be able to admit that.”

My nostrils flared, but I felt Elliot’s hand on my elbow and I took a deep breath. “I try.”

Elliot stepped forward. “Anyway,” he said, clearing his throat nervously, “we were wondering if you guys would want to play again.”

Jesse glanced at Jake and Dennis, who both shrugged noncommittally. It wasn’t the rave response that we’d hoped for, but it would do. “Sure. Though I’m not sure I
understand why you guys are so eager to give your money away.”

Elliot’s eyes flashed, and I could see him bite his tongue. That was good. Pissing Jesse off really wasn’t going to solve anything. At least—not yet.

“We’re playing Friday,” I told Jesse.

“We’ll be there,” he promised.

“This is never going to work,” Kelly complained to me. Her hair was pulled into two separate pigtails that pointed downward, adding to her dejected appearance, and she was dressed in head-to-toe black. The overall effect was quite dramatic.

“Are you kidding? It’s brilliant, however the whole thing plays out.”

Operation Revenge was tonight, and I was ready. In fact, I was in such high spirits that I was sporting my favorite pink silver glitter Stila eye pencil—the one that had gone into permanent hibernation in the wake of my devastating breakup with Jesse. It was called Spaghetti Strap, and it made an awesome complement to what I thought of as my lucky T—rather, a bright pink tank top with flashy rhinestone studs along the straps. Visually, Kelly and I were on
opposite ends of the spectrum, and it looked like we might be fairly yin and yang emotionally as well.

I grabbed her by the shoulders. “Kelly, this is a win-win situation,” I explained.

She smirked. “Unless, of course, Jesse makes off with all of our money again.”

I sighed wearily and turned my head to where Elliot was sitting cross-legged on Kelly’s bed. “Elliot. Explain, please, our mission?”

“It
is
kind of well thought out,” Elliot began reluctantly. “My plan: We tape the poker game like it’s a reality show. No one will protest if we tell them it’s for our project for film class.”

“Then we can study the footage later, after the game is over,” I jumped in eagerly.

“Oh, you mean
after
we’ve had our butts kicked by Jesse?” Kelly asked sulkily.

“Yes, there is a small monetary investment required,” I admitted, “but you don’t have to go in on every hand. I mean, no one’s going to fault you for cutting your losses.”

“They’ll just never play with me again.”

“But you just said you didn’t even
want
to play tonight!” I cried, exasperated. I
understood Kelly’s hesitation—after all, I’d lost plenty of cash myself at that last game—but, seriously, this was going to be good.

Kelly nodded. “Exactly,” she said.

Now she was talking like a Wes Anderson movie. There was no figuring her out, so I decided instead to plow ahead with my brilliant scheme. “So we study the footage and—
voilà!—
if Jesse has been scamming us, we’ve got him cornered. We expose him for the cheating, sneaky fraud that he is.”

“And if he isn’t cheating, but he’s just really that good?” Kelly asked archly.

“Then I’m a little embarrassed,” I admitted, “but we go ahead and edit the footage into a
High School World Series of Poker
vérité sort of thing. We can be the Michael Moores of Midvale. Either way, we ace the project. Teenagers playing cards?” I shivered. “Ooh, edgy.”

“That’s a low blow, appealing to my sense of ‘edge,’” Kelly growled. She looked at Elliot. “And you approve of this little revenge plot she’s got cooked up?”

Elliot bit his lip. “It does seem like Jesse’s been on a hot streak lately. Who knows? And what have we got to lose?”

Kelly opened her mouth to reply, but, believe it or not, Elliot jumped in first. “Don’t answer that,” he said. She shut her mouth dutifully and glared at him.

“Awesome!” I chirped, clapping my hands together enthusiastically. “Who’s got the tripod?”

Kelly raised her hand, still with the eyes of death.

“Cool,” I said, grabbing her hand and dragging her toward the living room. “Let’s go set up.”

When the doorbell rang this time, I was ready for it.

“I’ve got it!” I trilled, practically skipping toward the front hall. Elliot looked at me like I had seven heads, and Kelly was still sulking somewhere in the kitchen, but I wasn’t going to let their doubts dampen my enthusiasm.

“Welcome!” I announced brightly as I pulled the door open. My face fell when I realized who it was. “Oh,” I said, turning and leading the way back into the apartment. “Hi.”

“Gee, it’s great to see you, too,” marcus said, deadpan. He, Andy, and James had
come together, and they followed me toward the living room.

“Give her a break,” Andy shrieked, play-slapping at Marcus’s arm. “She’s gotta be nervous about playing against Jesse again.”

“Yeah, I mean,
I’m
nervous about playing against Jesse again,” james chimed in.

“Relax, guys,” I told them. “It’ll be fine. No one could get that lucky twice in a row.”

“Oh, we try to play as if there were no such thing as luck,” Andy rushed to explain.

I waved her off. “I know, I know, I’ve been filled in. What I—m saying is that there’s a chance we could turn things around tonight.”